People Fear Crime Regardless of Source
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* Re: Sam Enriquez’s “Middle Class Despairs Over Paradise Lost,” (Dec. 19).
Enriquez correctly identifies the Valley’s shrinking white majority but incorrectly identifies vanishing jobs and rising crime as a white problem. It is everyone’s problem.
Throughout Enriquez’s article, the most basic complaint is about Valley crime.
I am Latino and lived much of my childhood in one of Los Angeles’ poorer neighborhoods--one of those neighborhoods that Angelenos avoid. However, I remember that in the 1950s and early 1960s, not one of our neighbors locked their doors. Leaving the house meant that you locked the front door but the back door remained unlocked. In those days, poor just meant poor. Poor did not mean crime.
The overwhelming majority of people couldn’t care less if a black, white or Latino person lives next door. The vast majority of people actually welcome the diversity. They hate and fear the crime, whomever it comes from.
ROBERT A. CLANDOS
Calabasas
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